This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

All Articles

We were lost. We didn’t know where we were going or which way to turn. We had been driving around in circles for hours with nothing to show for it. And now we weren’t sure how to find our way home - and losing hope by the minute.
If the resurrection were just a repetition of this world, then it would be ridiculous, indeed. But the resurrection is different. It is a world without death.
As our first parents had a bond with the animals, as Noah had animals with him in the reboot of creation after the flood, so after this old creation comes to an end, we will enjoy a new creation that includes animals.
It is freezing, and I am stunned. I had learned about homelessness in school and seen it in movies but to see the way the Mole People lived.
Stop and be enveloped by the unending grace of Christ and his beautiful teachings that touch every corner of life.
I had been taught and believed in a God who is love, but as I walked outside that night I did not see him. I saw the stars and I felt their indifference.
We’re messed up people with messed up bodies. All of us. Even Miss America gets hemorrhoids. The Fall mocks us in our own skin. We’re all walking sermons.
Throughout the centuries, “Inferno” has also played a large role in the development of Christianity, particularly in the Western Medieval church.
To be lukewarm is to take refuge in your own works apart from the works of God.
The danger was not necessarily inside the city. Nor was it from an obvious source. Outside the walls of Thyatira, lay a small shrine of white stone.
Pergamum! Oh, Pergamum! Behold the glory of Pergamum! It was not at this time the greatest provincial power, nor was it the most favored in the Roman Empire.
Many say Balaam was a prophet, but this was not so. Balaam was no prophet. At least, not a prophet of Yahweh.